Abstract:Thin film bicrystals of gold were annealed to create a large variety of grain boundaries of controlled crystal misorientation. The faceting of these boundaries has been studied and some low energy boundary planes identified. Tilt boundaries with a 〈110〉 misorientation axis have been found to facet more readily than those with a 〈100〉 axis. The results have been considered in terms of O-lattices and coincident site lattices but neither of these approaches is able to explain all the observations. Consequently no simple and general criteria, based on geometrical considerations, have been found for the occurrence of grain boundary planes of low energy